"The fundamental scientific collaboration to face global challenges"
The Minister of University and Research, Maria Cristina Messa , together with the Minister of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China, Wang Zhigang , connected from Beijing, opened the 11th Week of the Italy-China Science, Technology and Innovation .
It was an opportunity to emphasize once again the importance of scientific collaboration, particularly in addressing global challenges, from the health emergency to environmental protection to the energy transition. " Research and innovation - wrote the ministers in a joint statement - are fundamental dynamics in the development of every nation and China and Italy boast a two-thousand-year history of exchanges and the ability to combine tradition and change ".
Particle and high-energy physics, advanced materials, advanced manufacturing and energy are the themes on which the works of the XI Italy-China Week - coordinated for Italy by the Città della Scienza Foundation of Naples in collaboration with the CNR - are focused - and they are strategic areas in which the two governments intend to intensify collaboration. The bilateral scientific and technological cooperation program launched 11 years ago by Italy and China aims to enhance national research and innovation systems, promoting academic, scientific and technological exchanges in common sectors of strategic and social importance.
In the last five years , 87 cooperation agreements have been signed in addition to the nearly 900 partnerships between Chinese and Italian universities , which involve not only the main universities of the two countries, but also the smaller ones. " The epidemic has shown that never before how much science and collaboration between scientists are vital, not only for the progress of our societies, but also for their very survival " said Minister Maria Cristina Messa closing the ceremony. "Science has led and is leading to progress of enormous importance, not only through technology or medicine but also thanks to research in the most diverse fields of human knowledge.
Current challenges raise multifaceted and complex scientific, technological and socio-economic questions, the solution of which requires the contribution of integrated disciplines. Issues such as the pandemic emergency or the aging of the population require the interweaving of integrated and coordinated skills, in a wider range of social, economic and political innovations that are sustainable in the long term ”concluded the minister.
Source: Ministero dell'Università e della ricerca